Nature Healer
Nature Staff Build
Nature is a lot more intense than holy healing, and although we recommend holy healing for newer players, aside from the difficulty of managing your Healing over Time (HoT’s) This build is aimed at newer players, with a reasonable skill floor but still relatively high skill ceiling. Nature healing lets you constantly stay on the move, only having to stop to cast your E spell “Circle of Life”. Be careful as this spell can be interrupted, and does require stacks of HoT’s on your targets to get its full effect. The basic principle is that you can use your Q to stack up your team with up to 3 stacks of “Rejuvenation” then give them all a burst heal by casting your E. The more stacks they have, the more healing they will receive. The Graveguard helmet gives you that extra, life saving dump heal to save an ally in trouble.
Nature healing is more complex than holy healing. Whilst holy healing is ‘restorative’, directly healing the health your teamates have lost after they have lost it, nature healing can be considered more to be mostly ‘preventative’. Keeping up your stacks of Healing over Time (HoT) on you team members, and yourself is vital. This healing over time is going to be actively replacing the damage dealt by enemies with health restored, with your E and W spells being used to help focus heal team members that have taken heavy burst damage. USE YOUR HOTKEYS for nature healing. F1 / F2 / F3 / F4 keys can be used to quickly switch targets to apply your HoT’s to your team. Arrange your party order to your liking to make this easier (e.g tank on F1, MPDS on F2, RDPS on F3 and F4) and remember their corresponding keys. It is also very important that you get used to self casting, this is done by pressing ALT+Q/W/E to target yourself with the spell. Alternatively you can set direct hotkeys for self casted spells.
Rejuvenation: Applies a stack of Healing over time (HoT) indicated by a leaf spinning around your target. This stacks up to three times. With an incredibly low cooldown this is a great way to stack your “Druid Robe” to maximum effect. It can be a good idea to stack your team with 2 stacks on the way into a fight, and top them up with the third stack once the battle begins to give the best up time possible. Watch the stacks, and make sure you restack your team. You MUST keep focus on keeping your stacks of HoT’s up on yourself and your team. If you want to push right in on the engage, you can activate your Druid Robe on your way into a fight to give your team incredible sustain to win a trade of early damage.
Cleanse Heal / Protection of Nature: Cleanse heal can be a great way of making sure you and your team don't get locked down for damage, freeing them of all CC effects. It removes one stack of Rejuvenation from the targets in exchange for a burst heal, with the more stacks on target granting more health. This also means that it has the amazing utility of taking your team’s stacks down from 3 to 2, allowing you to top them back up to three stacks again, instead of having to wait for the three stacks to expire to restack them entirely. “Protection of Nature” can be a useful switch instead where your opponents are more focused on high single target damage. I’ll add a special mention here to “Refreshing Breeze” giving you the ability to instantly spread your healing over time stacks from one ally to all in range. A great crutch to begin learning nature if you are struggling to keep up your HoT’s on the team.
Equipment abilities
Graveguard Helmet
A single target heal sacrificing 15% of your own health to heal 25% of a team member’s health. The amount healed is increased based on your heal power, so increases with you wearing a cloth robe, ‘adrenaline driven charity’ passive, and ‘everlasting spirit’ robe skill. As long as you are in a good position, the Healing over Time stacked on yourself will quickly replace that lost HP sacrificed by the skill. Be careful not to use the helmet if you are in a bad spot, and remember that you cannot cast it on yourself.
Cleric Robe
This robe keeps you safe from damage with the immunity offered by its main ability “Everlasting Spirit”. Activating it will also mean that if you are hit in the next 1.5 seconds, you will become immune to all damage, and have your healing given boosted by 20%. Using this spell to protect yourself from a diving periods of focus, also offers you the ability to quickly restore yourself to higher health with the boosted healing picking you up quicker, whilst the robe protects you from all damage.
Cleric Sandals
Given how mobile the Nature Staff is, and how fast paced the play is, cleric sandals can be the best way to actively avoid damage. The blink is an i-frame (invulnerability frame), so a well timed blink will protect you from burst damage (Hard but like I said, this build is not for the faint of heart). The instant reposition blink offers allows you to create space and maintain it to keep yourself and your team healthy.
Lymhurst Cape
You will need energy for this build, the Lymhurst Cape is a great option for keeping your energy levels topped up. Remember, if you run out of energy you can’t cast healing spells, and if you can’t cast healing spells, your team dies. That being said, this build uses an eye of secrets for energy sustain, so you may be able to make do with a martlock cape, giving you an extra layer of protection from diving players.
Eye of Secrets
The Eye of Secrets is a great choice to be able to let you focus more on healing and less on your energy sustain. An often overlooked offhand option that really helps in those long, drawn out fights. Again, feel free to customize the build. A mistcaller can also be a great option, substituting the graveguard helmet with a scholar cowl for more energy sustain and an extra personal defensive, with a mandatory lymhurst cape to cover extended periods of energy usage.
Passives
Adrenaline Driven Charity / Aggression / Toughness
Avalonian Pork Omelette
Grants you some extra cooldown reduction (cdr) stacking nicely with the mistcaller, but also some extra defense vs players stacking with the toughness passive on your graveguard helmet. Remember that cooldown reduction has diminishing returns, so an avalonian pork omelette is a great way to push your cdr up without overdoing it, and sinking good value into protecting yourself from enemy damage.
Resistance Potion
Increases your defense vs players, meaning your healing done stays at full effectiveness. Many people ask why not gigantify potion? Well that doubles your max and current hitpoints, therefore halving damage received, but then also effectively halving your healing received. It also improves your defense vs crowd control, meaning you will be stunned/silenced/rooted for a shorter duration. You may want to bring energy potions with you if you find you are not being focused often, but are running short on energy.
Strengths
- Keep healing on the move
- Cleanse to defend against Crowd Control
- Powerful HoT plus AOE healing Burst
Counters
- Heavy Mace purge removing HoT’s
- Great Curse Staff removing HoT’s